Substack

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Awesome China!

One of the most awe-inspiring aspects about the last quarter century of Chinese economic growth has been its amazing ability to exponentially scale up growth on almost all observable parameters, almost ad infinitum. This statistic via Marginal Revolution is astonishing.

China now exports every six hours as much as it did in the whole of 1978!


Update 1 (4/8/2010)

Over the past 30 years, its 10% growth rate has lifted 566 billion people over the $1.08 "extreme poverty" threshold set by the World Bank. Yilmaz Akyuz, chief economist of the South Centre, estimates that close to 60% of China's imports are used in the export sector and only 15% of imports are for domestic consumption and exports may have contributed to 50% of China's pre-crisis growth.

1 comment:

Jayadeep(JDP) said...

While the numbers are indeed amazing, it may be worth studying how it was achieved - that may not be worth writing home about. Is that sustainable ? And what methods did they use ? These are all hidden from the economists who just look at the final numbers.